Justice for all? It’s an issue ‘For All Time’
“It’s this system of scales, right?” says a character in Cornerstone Theater Company’s new community-involved play-creation project about the California justice system. “I mean of course, that’s why Justice is imagined as a woman holding a scale. But that’s just it. . . . We’re all asked to weigh whose loss is greater, who is suffering more.”
“For All Time,” as the drama is called, proceeds to fill those scales with compelling testimony. Per Cornerstone’s MO, the script is built largely from interviews -- in this instance, with people who’ve been on the receiving or the committing ends of crimes.
Naturally, we’re predisposed to empathize with those who’ve lost a loved one to violence or been subjected to it first-hand -- especially the young man who, with calm detachment, describes the disfiguring tortures of a beating. But Cornerstone’s findings, as delivered in KJ Sanchez’s script, challenge us to look from the other side as well and, in particular, to understand that perpetrators don’t always fit our preconceptions.
The point is made subtly in back-to-back scenes in which the same actress, Bahni Turpin, portrays the leader of a grieving-mothers support group, then turns around and slips into the skin of a quietly nurturing inmate who is a mother and grandmother.
Timeless, elemental emotions crackle in the straightforward words of everyday people. Also, an attempt is made to link such feelings across the centuries. So lines from the 2,500-year-old murder-and-revenge trilogy “The Oresteia” are woven among the present-day stories.
They end up feeling superfluous, however, in a script that flirts with being overlong.
Community talent constitutes more than half of the 21-member cast, so sometimes ideas get stopped up inside stilted characterizations. Yet at the opening performance, several actors were moved to tears mid-sentence.
Under Laurie Woolery’s direction, everything is artful yet immediate. The same is true of Amy C. Maier’s set design, which, tellingly, places the audience between two realms -- the granite columns and reflecting pool of the sort of public plaza that might be encountered outside a courthouse and the concertina-wire-topped fences of a correctional facility. There, in the middle ground, we are asked not necessarily to judge, but to listen.
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‘For All Time’
Where: Shakespeare Festival/LA building, 1238 W. 1st St., downtown L.A.
When: 8 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends Nov. 23.
Price: $20 reserved or pay-what-you-will at the door
Contact: www.cornerstone theater.org
Running time: 2 hours, 23 minutes
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